


Violaceous

by elena_stidham



Series: Lilac Theory [3]
Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Fluff, Growing Old Together, Happy Ending, Interviews, M/M, Not Beta Read, Post-Canon, it's a wrap up oneshot you guys I just wanted this to be a trilogy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-13
Updated: 2018-08-13
Packaged: 2019-06-27 00:07:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,404
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15674034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elena_stidham/pseuds/elena_stidham
Summary: "The child learns to walk by falling down."-Kazakh Proverb//Final Part of the Lilac Theory Triology. Spoilers for String Theory and Five Petaled Lilacs if you have not read those.





	Violaceous

**Author's Note:**

> WARNINGS FOR: Language, a disgusting amount of fluff
> 
> SONGS USED TO GET IN THE MOOD: “Second Sun” by Bonobo, a lot of the songs on the String Theory playlist tbh (nostalgia from like a year ago wow) and a couple from the Five Petaled Lilacs playlist.
> 
> WARNING! THIS HAS SPOILERS FOR STRING THEORY AND FIVE PETALED LILACS! IF YOU HAVEN’T READ THOSE, PLEASE DO SO! Okay considering you’re still reading, that means you’ve finished. Hey! Welcome! I’m glad you enjoyed the series, but this is it! This is it! This is the end of the Lilac Theory trilogy. It’s only a oneshot, just to show where everything stands ten years later, but I wanted to turn this into a solid trilogy because a trilogy is better than two parts. Regardless, thanks once again to thank you guys for reading this trilogy and going on this incredible journey from start to finish. I also want to say that after this fic I believe I will no longer be writing Otayuri fics. The passion for it just kinda died for me. I mean, I may change my mind with the movie and season two and stuff – I still ship it, after all – it’s just not my main course anymore, you feel me? My attention’s been sucked into this new fic I’m working on for the Legend of Zelda (I even started writing my own original story for it! Check out "Shattered Courage" if you're interested). But other than that, if you want to keep up with my Zelda writing and my updates on that work, my tumblr for is is minuetofthewild. If not, my personal tumblr is elenastidham. Thank you once again for reading and I hope you enjoy the final part to Lilac Theory.  
> -Elena

**********************************************************************

**WHERE SHE STANDS:**

**21 years old – on top of the world.**

**********************************************************************

The lights were on before, but it was just now that they were amplified to portray her in front of the entire audience. “Christ, that’s bright,” she said, her soft voice and her overall dainty physique didn’t match the description beneath her name.

“We’re on in five.”

She scanned the audience, her eyes glancing around, not really looking for anybody in particular, but a few faces did stand out.

Adjusting her dress, she stood still, allowing the makeup crew to add a few finishing touches to her face and checking the mic on her neckline before confirming her final points. She was used to interviews, but yet there was something about this one that seemed a uniquely unfamiliar. She didn’t know if it was the person she was talking to or the overall nature of the questions she glanced at before beginning, but she found herself lost in her own ability to talk. Her personality was unique in her field, and her background just as enticing.

“One minute.”

She sat up straight, perfecting her posture, closing her eyes and allowing herself to breathe.

“Are you ready, Miss Plisetsky?”

She nodded.

The area fell into a small moment of silence, and suddenly a wave of clapping was what brought her back into reality. She opened her eyes just to smile in time for the cameras sweeping in, the hostess greeting the audience gently but with an immense amount of vigour.

“Today I’m with two-time Olympic gold medallist Veruca Plisetsky, how are you feeling today, Veruca?” There was an elevation of faceless fiction in her tone, despite her words being true.

“I’m lovely, thank you,” Veruca responded warmly.

“Now, Veruca, you’re the youngest female boxer in the world to earn two consecutive gold medals. Your first one was when you had _just_ turned seventeen, and your second was this past summer, where you were barely twenty-one.” The hostess said, astonished at her own words. Veruca just nodded kindly and let her continue speaking. “You came in and nobody had heard of you, but you just, blew everyone away! How did you do it?”

Veruca giggled softly, a little embarrassed by the compliments. “My family and I like to joke that it’s in our genes,” she said simply. Small laughter emerged from the audience for a moment before she continued. “But honestly, I just had a really good coach and a good support system at home. We just like to say it’s genetic because of my Papa.”

“Your Papa being former Olympic figure skater Yuri Plisetsky, correct?”

“Yes, ma’am,” she smiled. She felt her phone vibrate in her pocket. He was in the audience. A little late, but he was there.

The hostess gently flattened her dress against her legs and rested the fabric beneath her palm. “May I ask why you still call him your Papa? I mean technically, biologically, he’s your—”

“—older brother, yes—”

“—yeah, and by that technicality wouldn’t your sister Aisha technically be considered your niece?” It was a genuine question, not that Veruca didn’t understand it, but that didn’t change the sudden uneasy feeling in her stomach when it was worded like that.

“Oh god, I don’t like that wording,” she laughed. “I mean, it’s a common question I get, honestly, because when most kids find out that they’re being raised by a sibling they just start to call them by their name, and I tried that at one point, but it didn’t feel right to me.” Before the next question came, she just went on ahead and answered it, not really thinking about it. “For the first eight years of my life this man had raised me and loved me like his own and in that time he was the only family I had. Even after Papa Altin came he and I still had this unbreakable father-daughter bond. Even when they sat me down and had that talk with me when I was thirteen, I just kept calling him Papa because literally nothing else applied to him. He may not have been my father, but he was definitely my dad, you know? Does that make sense?”

She smiled at the response, bringing a hand up to her chest and cradling it over her heart. “Yes, it makes perfect sense. That’s so sweet.”

Veruca continued. “And honestly, the fact that he chose me just kinda made it feel all that much more special.” She paused, debating on whether or not to say the next case in point, but she figured she might as well, just to show how strong and unbreakable of a bond she and Yuri have, despite the situation not being common. “Even if me and Papa Altin get into some kind of disagreement he always tends to be more bias to me instead of him.”

“By Papa Altin you mean former figure skater Otabek Altin, correct?”

“Yes,” Veruca nodded.

“Can you talk about meeting him?”

Veruca sighed (“oh, _gosh_ ,”), her eyes trailing upwards slightly as she thought for a brief moment, trying to perfectly recapture everything that she had seen and felt. She remembered Aisha most vividly, but she did remember the fuzzy pictures and blurry colours of Otabek Altin. She nodded when she found her words, and she looked back at the hostess so that she could share them.

“Well, I didn’t know their past when I met him – that was a story for when I got older – but I did notice there was a history because they’d talk about things that happened before I was born.” She waved it off, realising it was a little irrelevant. “But anyways, we had met at my Aunt Tamara’s wedding – his daughter, my sister, Aisha, was making fun of my dress and the way I talked so I punched her in the face.”

The audience laughed, and she couldn’t help but chuckle along with her statement, shrugging and just tossing her hands in the air for a moment. “You know, kids and their crazy solutions. But what’s really funny is how my Aunt Tamara wasn’t even my aunt at the time – she’s Papa Altin’s baby sister – and I remember overhearing my Papa on the phone with her and asking ‘is he gonna be there because I’m not going if he’s going to be there’ and she was all ‘oh, no, no, of course not! He had a game.’”

“But he was there?”

“Damn right he was there, she lied about the whole thing,” she laughed. She shrugged again. It was something she thought about and when it really came down to it, she would have done the exact same thing. “But really, I’m so glad she did, because there was so much between my Papas that were left unfinished, and this just opened the door for them to talk through everything.”

She smiled warmly, her fingers tracing around her left ring finger, waiting for her turn. She knew it was going to happen someday, but she wasn’t going to push it. She wanted to take her time in relationships; the last thing she wanted was to end up miserable with someone she doesn’t even want, as shallow as it sounded, she had to be picky. But she was seeing someone – a pretty girl with a face too elegant to not remember, and she was definitely going to take her time with her should it continue.

“The next thing I know two years later they’re getting married,” Veruca said, speaking with her hands now. “I can remember being there with Aisha, we were flower girls, and I just saw her there with the honourable attendants and she was just _grinning_ from ear to ear. She knew exactly what she did.”

“Do you remember who all else was there?” The hostess was glued in – Veruca really didn’t understand why everybody seemed so interested. It was just her family to her; an incredible family, but still just her family. However, to everybody else in the audience, these figure skaters were one of the most talked about couples of the new century, a love story that transcends beyond time. Many speculated that, after all this time and despite all that happened, if they were soulmates.

“Oh gosh, um,” Veruca thought for a moment. “My Uncle Viktor, my Uncle Yuuri, my cousins, my Uncle Erkin, Aunt Tamara,” she thought for a few moments longer. “A lot of other faces – oh, and my current coach was there.”

“You met your coach at your parents’ wedding?” She asked, her eyes wide but also curiously astonished.

Veruca nodded simply.

“So, for those in the audience that don’t know,” she gestured, “who is your coach?”

“My coach was another former Olympic boxer, her name is Maria Romanova. She was also a former cop,” Veruca said simply, the name rolling right off of her tongue. Honestly, she didn’t know much about coach Romanova other than what was told and what she could figure out – which, there wasn’t a lot to piece together. “She and my Papa go _way_ back, apparently. He told me she was there for him during a specific moment of his early childhood, but to this day he never told me what it was. I mean, I have a _rough_ idea as to what it could be, but it’s not my place to pry. I just know that she gave him her police badge when it happened and he’s kept it ever since.”

“Did she start training you immediately after you guys met or—”

“—yes, I took my dress off at the wedding and just threw hands.” Everyone laughed, and so did she. “No, we waited a couple weeks, working things out and paperwork and things like that. I didn’t start my training until I was like, almost twelve.”

“And she got you to where you are today.”

“Well, she got me here physically. But as far as mentally? My Papa was, is, and always will be my rock and support in life.” There was some audible awing in the crowd, and she just smiled. She could feel his eyes on her, practically melting at the words and thinking _look at how strong you’ve become._

She remembered being a small child when she started boxing for the first time, coming home with nothing but pure confidence that she was going to be one of the best in the world. Yuri didn’t mind. He wasn’t too crazy about the idea of his little girl actually going through with fighting people for a living – he wasn’t too crazy about the idea of people fighting his little girl for a living, either. He was already feeling anxiety over her inevitable upcoming wounds.

But still, he’d smile and encourage her anyway.

“Don’t forget me when you’re famous,” he’d laugh and tell her.

“You’ll be the only person I’ll never forget,” she’d say.

And here she was.

“He sacrificed so much for me,” Veruca said softly, a tiny crack in her voice, a wavering melody that somehow still managed to soothe. The audience fell into a deep silence, and she could feel her father staring at her with those gentle, fiery eyes. “He took care of me when I literally had no one else. He had done all of this, and not once did he let me give up on my dreams, and he was so – god, I can remember being as young as seven and writing letters to Ded Moroz begging him to give my Papa a friend other than me. I’d wish every Christmas and I’d wish on every lilac petal I found. He gave me the best life I could ever have, and I wanted him to have his.”

“So how did you feel when you found out he and Otabek Altin were getting married?”

Veruca smiled, her eyes a little misty but she gently rested her fingers beneath her tear ducts and took a deep breath when she pulled them away. Her voice still had a small shake and tremble, but it was the best kind. “I felt joy, but not for that reason. It didn’t really sink in until about a year afterwards and he just looked at me – this _look_ – and he said to me, ‘babydoll, I am so, so happy,’ and then he just got up and did something. I don’t remember. But I remember it clicked in my head, and then I went to my room and I just _sobbed._ ”

The hostess shared her misty eyes, too. “The good kind of sob?”

**********************************************************************

**CORRECTION, LOOKING AT HIM IN THE EYE:**

**“The best kind of sob.”**

**********************************************************************

 

_You taught me the courage of stars before you left_   
_How light carries on endlessly, even after death_   
_With shortness of breath, you explained the infinite_   
_How rare and beautiful it is to even exist_

_I couldn't help but ask_   
_For you to say it all again_   
_I tried to write it down_   
_But I could never find a pen_   
_I'd give anything to hear_   
_You say it one more time_   
_That the universe was made_   
_Just to be seen by my eyes_

_I couldn't help but ask_   
_For you to say it all again_   
_I tried to write it down_   
_But I could never find a pen_   
_I'd give anything to hear_   
_You say it one more time_   
_That the universe was made_   
_Just to be seen by my eyes_

_With shortness of breath, I'll explain the infinite_   
_How rare and beautiful it truly is that we exist_

**********************************************************************

**WHERE THEY STAND:**

**Repaired from broken shells ten years ago.**

**********************************************************************

 

They started dancing when Luminous started playing. Their hands found their way onto each other’s hips, tracing down their shoulders until their foreheads leaned in to touch.

Smiles.

It was the smallest bouts of comfort they found in each other’s arms, the tiniest pieces of love in detail that projected loud enough for an entire auditorium to hear. Except now, there was no stage here – there was no platform or projection to convey what they felt; there was just their hands, their lips, their small steps across the kitchen tiles and everything a million patterns in-between.

Yuri’s lips barely touched, his breath making more contact with Otabek’s skin than he had in their brief kiss. Even long after their music finished playing, they still continued their dance, as if music never needed to exist at all.

“I saw Veruca’s interview on the television today,” Otabek whispered softly, his hands resting on Yuri’s waist while Yuri’s arms dangled loosely around his shoulders. “It was very sweet.”

Yuri let out a breathy chuckle. “She made me cry.”

“I’m sure she did,” Otabek grinned. “It’s all well deserved.”

“I’m just upset that they didn’t really focus on her – after all, it’s her whole career. She kept asking about us when we really don’t matter anymore,” Yuri sighed. He knew how reporters could be, though. If they didn’t get their answers one way, they’d take a million different other avenues to get it out somehow. He admired that dedication to look anywhere else, but it still wasn’t great when it came at the expense of someone.

“You matter to me,” Otabek said, almost like a whine and jokingly hurt.

Yuri just pushed him playfully. “You know what I mean.”

Otabek just shrugged, leaning in to kiss his forehead. It was an unspoken way of telling Yuri that he was worrying too much or overthinking something pointless, and he just groaned quietly, leaning in closer to press his ear to his chest as they swayed. The heartbeat that pushed against his eardrum was calm, the rhythm in itself was already forming a lullaby.

The house had grown so quiet once Aisha moved out – she was living comfortably in an apartment right across her university, majoring in dance in hopes to live the rest of her life as a choreographer. She drabbled in skating a bit when she was younger, but she found herself more drawn to land rather than the icy sea. This time, it was Otabek’s turn to be devastated.

Not that he wasn’t feeling a rushed mix of emotions when Veruca moved out, but it definitely didn’t have the same impact on him as it did on Yuri – who had sobbed for _hours_ after she stepped in her new place. It seemed that now it was his own daughter, things made a little more sense.

So it was just them. The house was suddenly almost too big to hold them both.

Despite it all, they still had each other. It wasn’t the same amount of noise as there was when their girls still lived with them, but they provided each other with their own special set of sounds that nobody could replicate.

And yet through the sound of Otabek’s heartbeat Yuri found his head tilting up to look at him, his eyes never faltering from when they were kids. They were still those same kids – just in a different life now.

Their lips brushed together, but only briefly, so when they pulled apart they managed to find themselves breathless from holding it in. No amount of words could be used to describe it – how much they missed each other – and no amount of words that they could gather could summarise how happy they felt when they promised each other when they would never go away.

Cheek kisses.

_“Forever and always.”_

It felt like they had lived a thousand lives within the timespan of one, and throughout at least half of this life they had spared it with each other. They were still so, so young. But despite this young the pair had found themselves in that middle ground of in-between besides young and old, their hair just slightly greying and their cheeks only moderately withering with their age.

Otabek tugged his body just gently to follow him, as it was growing later in the day, that particular time in evening where they could find the other side of sunrise – the flames slowly extinguishing behind the cloudy sky.

Yuri followed, letting himself get dressed and then climb into bed with his one true friend. He leaned in, curling his body against his lover’s chest as they laid together side by side.

_What a life I live,_ was all he could think to himself. _What a life._

They were at this point in their lives where they didn’t even need to say anything anymore, not speaking and communication strictly through touch had brought out waves of emotions that tender words could not convey. Their silence was not forbidden, as was each individual touch across their skins.

Yuri’s eyelids had fallen heavy, and he had drifted onward to the dream anew, just a few passing moments before moonrise.

Otabek stared at him for just a moment, his fingers trailing down along his arms and drawing patters of circles and hearts of love within his skin, but after some silence he looked up, watching the boy in his arms.

This was the same life he lived. This was the same boy he loved. They were the same ones that fell apart, only to find each other with their new pieces.

It was all the same life.

Otabek took a deep breath, staring for just a short while longer, before he brought a hand up and cradled his face. He remembered the intense amount of anxiety he’d have with repeating each action he would only dream about continuing. He remembered how hard he’d just shake and shiver with anticipation while waiting for something, _anything,_ to go wrong – but it didn’t.

There’s something new about this particular Otabek Altin in his same life: he was not afraid anymore.

Bringing his hand past his cheeks, he gently took the strands of golden hair framing Yuri’s face between his fingers, carefully gliding them down behind his ear, and tucking them in just so. He repeated this action a few times, taking his time with each stroke until there was no more hair to brush back.

It was then when he finally pressed their lips together one last time for the night, and allowed himself to join his lover in their well deserved sleep. His hand gently held onto his, cradling it tight enough to where it would be the first thing they feel when they wake up in the next morning.

**********************************************************************

**WHERE THEY GO:**

**Where there are fulfilled promises and lilac strings.**

**********************************************************************

**Author's Note:**

> This has been the Lilac Theory Triology. I just want to say once again: thank you.
> 
> -Elena


End file.
